Proud of Yourself, Doubting Yourself
by Lorata
Summary: The question isn't what the years of isolation and brainwashing did to Willa Earp to make her like this. The real question is, was that Willa made at all, or was she just unleashed? Not an apology, but an exploration.


Willa's first memory is an impossible one.

She's less than a year old, and that's why it's impossible, babies don't remember that young, except she can see it clear as day when she closes her eyes. She's lying on a quilt on the floor of the homestead, puffy pink fabric held together with thick yellow stitching. The quilt is gone now, dragged down to hell with the revenant that tried to steal her in it, but Willa remembers how it felt, soft and warm.

In the impossible memory she's lying on that quilt, and there's a warm ray of sunshine streaming from the window, with dust motes dancing lazily in the patch of gold. Willa reaches up her hand to catch the light, her fist pink and chubby and not yet soaked with blood. Daddy's there, and Mama, Daddy sprawled on the floor with Willa and Mama sitting on the couch with her legs tucked up under her, face pinched in her usual tight frown.

"You've got good instincts, baby girl," Daddy says proudly. "Look at you, reaching for the light. You'll make the best heir yet."

"Don't talk to her like that," Mama says. Her voice is thin and stretched like the sheet an older Willa will pin across two beams and dare Waverly to walk across. "She's not the Heir yet, Ward, she's a _baby_. Let her be."

Daddy ignores Mama, which later Waverly will never understand to be a blessing. "You wanna hold Peacemaker, baby girl? I bet you do."

"Ward!" Mama's voice sharpens.

Daddy gives her a narrow-eyed look that shuts Mama up fast. "It's not like it's gonna kill her," Daddy drawls, and he reaches into his belt and pulls out the gun. In Willa's memory it's almost as long as she is, and he raises her up into a sitting position, holds out Peacemaker and sets it across her lap. The metal feels cool against her bare legs, and the gun is hard and unyielding when Willa pokes it. Later Peacemaker will snap to her grip like it's an extension of her fingers, but even magical connections can't make a baby lift a two-pound gun.

Daddy laughs and takes Peacemaker away, tucking it in the back of his belt again. "Aw, Willa, don't make that face," he says. Willa's memory couldn't possibly work this way, but she sees herself anyway, pouting and sticking out her bottom lip. It won't be long before that expression stops making Daddy laugh and makes him snarl instead. "I'll get you a little version so you can practice until you're old enough, how's that? We'll have you be the youngest sharpshooter in Purgatory."

Mama pushes herself to her feet and strides out of the room without a word. Daddy lets her go without a flicker on his face. He lifts Willa into his arms, and he smells of aftershave and dust and pine wood. He doesn't smell of whiskey, not yet. Willa ducks her face into his neck, and he runs a hand over her back. "We'll kill all those sons of bitches, baby girl," Daddy promises, his voice low and dark. "You and me."

It's an impossible memory, see, but Willa has her theories. Mama likes to tell that story now and then, when the makeup cakes the skin around her eye and she's feeling mean, pushing her fork into a slice of pie and mashing it hard into the plate. She tells the story to Willa, to Wynonna, to little Waverly with her big brown eyes, too young to understand, and afterward she sits back and laughs, sharp and bitter.

She tells it when she wants to hurt Daddy but she can't, because she's not the Heir and she's not an Earp except through the ring on her finger, and Daddy has the Heir's reflexes and quick temper and he never lets her forget any of it. She can't hit him, she can't leave him, and the only thing she can do is try to chisel a little gap in the shield of adoration the girls have for their father.

Mama tells the story so often that Willa's mind creates its own version, weaves it into her memories so she can't untangle it from the real ones. Eventually all her memories feel like that, copies of copies of copies so smeared and faded they may as well be stored away in the library's mimeograph archives, and it hardly matters anymore.

* * *

Wynonna never shuts up about Daddy.

It's not Wynonna's fault, because Willa is the one who holds Daddy's attention and Willa is the Heir and the focus of all the pressure and Daddy's pent-up fear and rage and panic. Wynonna isn't the one Daddy wakes up at 3am and drags outside to practice shooting targets in the dark because _revenants don't just come out in daylight baby girl, do you want to let your sister die because you wanted to sleep instead of train?_

Wynonna doesn't see the bruises on Willa's arm from where Daddy wrenched her around to face him when she tried to storm away in a stupid, childish huff. She thinks Willa plays with makeup with Mama because she's older and more grown up, and so Wynonna clamours to join them when Mama pulls out the big pink powder puff and shows Willa how to dab concealer over her tender cheekbone, because Wynonna wants to be a grownup too.

Willa could tell her, but it's one thing to hold Peacemaker at arm's length with Daddy's hands on her shoulder to steady her, one thing to pull the trigger and watch the revenant stumble back in shock before Daddy takes the Colt and finishes the demon off, and it's another to look Wynonna in the face and tell her that Daddy's not the man she thinks he is. There's cold and then there's cruel, and Willa isn't sure she wants to cross that line.

"I wish I could be the heir too," Wynonna says, wistful, and she flops back on the grass and stares up at the clouds as they float their lazy way across the clear blue sky. "Then we could train together and fight together and it would be so awesome!"

Willa thinks of bleary mornings at school, the words on her paper blurring in her exhausted vision, propping her head on her hand and fading until the teacher calls her name for the third time. She thinks of the sharp _crack_ of Daddy's backhand against Mama's cheek. She thinks of her first revenant sighting, how she froze on instinct and held her breath and tried to make herself small without even realizing, how Daddy trained her for that but not the way he thinks he did.

"Yeah," Willa says, and she reaches over and tweaks Wynonna's hair. "It would be."

* * *

"Why doesn't Daddy ever come here?" Willa asks.

The light is a cool grey-blue just past twilight, like holding up a piece of coloured cellophane and looking through it. Willa feels the cold from the headstone right through her jeans but it's comforting, in a way, and when she shivers it's the theatric kind, not the kind that's bone-deep and soon turns to the sluggish, imaginary warmth that means you're dead.

Mama takes a long final drag of her cigarette, and the orange glow lights her cheekbones and the tip of her nose but not the ugly purple splotch around her eye. She pinches the cigarette between her fingers and flicks the butt away onto the ground, where the last spark makes a quiet hiss against the frosted tips of the brown late-autumn grass before extinguishing. Mama doesn't bother grinding it with her heel, just leaves it there, and Willa watches the last curl of smoke before it fades into the air.

"Daddy doesn't like graveyards," Mama says neutrally. "Says he spends enough time with the dead, he don't need to go courting any more."

"And that's why you come here?" Willa rocks backwards, loses her balance and nearly falls clean off, but Mama reaches out and stops her with a hand against her back.

Mama nods. "Not a lot of places to feel safe in this town," she says, half to Willa and half to whoever else is listening out there in the space where God should be but isn't. "At least this one's mine."

"I like it here," Willa says. It's a little frightening, knowing that if a revenant crawled out of a grave right now she couldn't stop it, not without Peacemaker and not before she's twenty-seven, but that feels good too, in a way. That's the sort of thing she should be afraid of, not the too-heavy tread of Daddy's boots when he's in a temper. Not all the girls at school are afraid of their fathers, she's asked, but everyone should fear demons. This doesn't make her strange, it makes her smart.

Mama turns to her and smiles, one eye squinted. "Me too, baby girl. Me too."

* * *

"I have a test tomorrow," Willa snaps, squaring her shoulders and planting her hands on her hips. Nothing good comes from defying Daddy but she can't help it, she's the Heir and she's an Earp and Daddy's blood runs hot like poison in her veins. "I need to study."

"The revenants don't care about English class," Daddy says. Says, not yells. Willa likes it better when he yells, it's easier to win when he's angry. When he's calm he's focused and that means they're not talking Heir to Heir, it's Ward the grownup and Willa the little girl and adults tell children what to do, the end. "What are you going to do, quote Old Yeller at them and hope they cry themselves back to hell?"

Willa should give up, really, nothing gets through to Daddy but guns and blood and hellfire, but the thought of Marcie yesterday, sneering and snickering with Jessi behind their books, only stokes the fire of desperation hotter. "They laugh at me at school," Willa bursts out. "Because I know more about demons than long division. Because I can scale a brick wall and fire a pistol at a target without missing a step but I don't know the rules for football. Because —" She swipes a hand over her eyes, furious at herself for crying, but she would rather face all seventy-seven of the revenants than listen to the girls at school whisper and giggle to each other when she passes.

Daddy frowns. "Who laughs at you?" he demands, and he drops himself down into a crouch and grips Willa by the shoulders. "What are they saying? Tell me who it is, baby girl, I'll go down to that school myself right now and —"

It's absurd but Willa bursts out laughing, the last of the tears still stinging her eyes, and she wipes her cheek again. "No, Daddy, you can't go busting into school with Peacemaker and scaring the shit out of girls on the playground."

Daddy snorts. His fingers still dig into Willa's muscles, but this time she doesn't mind the ache. "I could do," he says, in a mock-warning tone. "Scare the shit out of them good and proper. Who do they think they are, making fun of my little girl like that?"

Willa shrugs. "They're girls," she says. "We're meaner than the revenants, some days, and I can't shoot them or punch them or I'll get in trouble with the teachers, and they know it."

Daddy growls a little, but for once he doesn't push. Instead he gives Willa a little shake and stands up. "All right then, missy, tonight you go study for your test so you can shame their little hair ribbons right off their heads, you hear?"

"Yes sir," Willa says, relief crashing hard.

"And don't you let your Mama hear you say 'shit'," Daddy warns. "She'll holler at me for being a bad influence."

It's true. Last week Daddy took Willa into the woods and showed her how to kill and clean a fox with her bare hands and a hunting knife and Mama didn't say a word, only pressed her lips together and looked away when they came home, sleeves soaked from the garden hose and fingers and wrists scrubbed clean. All that and nothing, but drop a cuss word at the dinner table and Willa would be washing all the dishes for the next three days.

Willa salutes, Daddy winks like they've got themselves a secret, and she dashes upstairs to study before he can change his mind.

* * *

Mama gives birth to a third daughter when Willa is nine, little baby Waverly, and Willa is so exhausted she can't even keep up the act anymore. "Do you want to hold her?" Mama asks, holding out the little pink bundle wrapped in a little pink blanket, her eyes soft and beaming as though she didn't just spend the last twelve hours screaming in the hospital. As though Willa has any idea what to do with soft, vulnerable things she could kill by dropping them on the floor.

"No," Willa rasps, and winds the bandage tighter around her hand. There was an uprising last night and she and Daddy went out to stop it, Willa in Daddy's borrowed jacket because it makes her feel stronger and faster than the pretty coat Mama bought her for school, Daddy with Peacemaker at his belt and his strides so long Willa had to run to keep up the whole way. She has no more energy left for babies and Mama's tender feelings, not today.

Mama frowns, but she doesn't try again. "Wynonna," she calls out, and Wynonna tears out from around the corner. "Come look at your baby sister!"

Willa drags herself back up the stairs, pulling herself up with both hands on the banister because she's half afraid she'll slide all the way back down if she doesn't keep a solid hold. She can't do this again, not now. Willa loves Wynonna and would never trade her away for anything, but she can't do this all over again from scratch. She can't handle another sister who will never know the pressure of being the Heir, another person Willa will have to protect from revenants and Daddy's fists and Mama's bitter temper.

She doesn't understand why they needed another baby anyway. Isn't she enough? Isn't Wynonna? Mama wanted another girl so that she could have a daughter that Daddy didn't steal away to the woods in the middle of the night, a daughter without a taste for blood and hands that fired a gun before they ever held a crayon, and Willa understands that. She's not Mama's, not really, they might share the secret of Daddy's true nature but the truth is Willa's his through and through. At the end of the day she'll go down with a revenant at her throat or a rope around her neck or a bullet in her chest like all the Heirs before her. You can't really love someone who'll end up like that.

Wynonna won't ever know pain and suffering like Willa does, that's the trade Willa makes every day under Daddy's steely gaze with Peacemaker steady and solid in her hands. She'll kill to save Wynonna, and she'll do it until the last of the seventy-seven are back in the ground or one of them drags her down with them. She understands that Wynonna is Mama's trade too, one daughter to keep and one to lose. One for one, that makes sense, that's just good, clean math, so why another? Why bring another life into this hell of guns and demons?

Willa can't do it again. There's no more room left inside her for the kind of love it would take not to hate another innocent little baby, not to despise her for the life she's going to have that Willa never will. There's only dust and blood and gunpowder, and Willa used up all her love on Wynonna and has nothing left to give.

They can ask her to fight demons. They can't ask her this.

* * *

The darkness presses in on Willa like a heavy blanket as she stands in the centre of Mama and Daddy's room and stares down at Waverly, asleep in her cradle. All around her are the sounds of the homestead settling in for the night, creaking in the walls and the rafters above, the faint rattle of the windows as the wind howls outside. Mama's breathing, slow and soft. Daddy's rattling snore. Whenever Mama complains he jokes it keeps the revenants awake at night, and if it's a good day she laughs and elbows him and says he'd be able to keep the house safer from the couch.

Waverly breathes too soft for Willa to catch it, save now and then when it hitches, two or three quick inhales before she lets out the quietest, most gentle little sigh. Mama near melts whenever she hears it, and Wynonna giggles, and then they turn to Willa with beaming, expectant faces and wait for her to do the same.

Willa has pretended, when she can, because for the first time in a while the house is happy and quiet and she doesn't want to be the one to ruin it, but she can't keep it up forever. There's nothing magical about a baby in a world where the dead crawl out of the ground and tear the throats out of the living.

She crosses her arms, grips her bicep and runs her thumb over the rough line of scabbing running across the curve of her muscle. She took a knife to it the other day in a fit of helpless anger, dragged the tip until the blood beaded up bright and red, and Willa thought, she thought maybe it would help. She'd heard it helps, from some of the girls at school, the kind who coloured their nails black with sharpie and scrawled terrible poetry on their chucks. They said that the pain brings sharp attention to the present and reminds them they're alive, except that's not true is it. Because revenants feel pain, she's seen them scream and writhe and beg Daddy to put them down and make it end, so what's the point, then?

Hurting herself doesn't make anything better, not when the world is lining up to do it anyway. Willa has a scab on her arm and a hundred already healed, never mind the bruises and the muscle aches, and she's not even ten. And so she stares down at Waverly, Mama's little angel with her soft cheeks and curling eyelashes, and the rage reaches down inside her, grabs her insides, and does its best to tear them right out of her.

Willa would like to say she doesn't realize what she's doing, or that she acted without thinking, but that would be a pretty lie. Willa is perfectly aware of every movement, every heartbeat, every thought that flashes across her mind in the split-second before she sticks her hand into Waverly's crib and pinches her on the leg as hard as she can.

Waverly's eyes fly open and she hollers in pain and surprise. The sound is loud enough to freeze Willa in place except her body remembers how to break through that moment of fear and immobility because she's trained it to. And so this time Willa really does move without thinking, she's out the door with her back pressed flat against the wall before Mama makes it out of bed, Daddy groaning behind her to _shut the damn baby up willya, some of us gotta work in the morning_.

Willa closes her eyes and focuses on calming her breathing as Mama picks up Waverly and sings to her, but the funny thing is, after the staccato beat of her heart slows down, the rush doesn't fade. She's lightheaded and half afraid she'll swoon if she moves and so Willa stays there, letting the solid wall hold her upright as Mama's crooning voice floats past.

She holds her hand in front of her, a pale smudge in the gloom of the empty hallway, and there's no mark on her fingers, nothing she can trace in the privacy of her bedroom to remind herself she's here, but it feels more real anyway. She shuts her eyes again and focuses, the feel of Waverly's soft skin between her fingertips, how her nails dug in deep without breaking the surface. Waverly's cry, every bit as startled and imploring as the revenants with Peacemaker's barrel burning a hole in their foreheads. The flash of power and satisfaction that jolted through her.

"Willa?" Wynonna sticks her head around the corner, rubbing at one eye and yawning. "Everything okay?"

"Waverly must've had a nightmare," Willa says, soothing. "Mama's got her, it's all right now." She puts her arm around Wynonna's shoulders, and her sister flops into her side in asleepy protest, head resting against Willa's ribcage, as Willa leads her back to bed.

Later the doctor tells Mama there's no reason to worry about Waverly's sudden wake-ups in the middle of the night. She's eating fine, she goes down without a fuss, she's not got colic or croup or anything else that might be dangerous. Babies cry, he tells her, patting her on the shoulder as Mama protests and Willa scuffs her sneakers across the floor. Don't worry your little head about it, he says, she'll grow out of it soon enough.

"Let's go, Willa," Mama says, her voice tight and furious. "I'll find someone who's willing to listen to me."

"Sure thing, Mama," Willa says, and she bends to tie her shoelace to hide a smile.

* * *

The creek is swollen fat with the spring snowmelt, water frothing white as it dashes against the rocks along the bank. In the heat of summer the bed is dry enough to walk across, and Willa used to pick her way over the stones and pretend that no one could touch her on the other side. Now the roar of the water drowns out the twittering of the red-winged blackbirds camped out in the rushes, and Willa bares her teeth as her heartbeat speeds up in response. So much power, so much danger, all in the same stuff she keeps in a drinking glass beside her bed at night.

Willa feels the song of the creek in her blood, inviting her in, and she takes one step forward toward the bank. Her boot skids on a patch of wet leaves and she nearly loses her balance, flails wildly and catches an overhanging branch to steady herself. Twigs prick her palms and her knee wrenches from the effort of keeping herself upright, and now Willa's heart pounds even harder.

She stares at the creek, swallows hard, then backs up and kicks a half-rotted branch over the edge. The water sweeps it away in seconds, tugging the wet-black wood down out of sight. When it surfaces it's so far down the creek she almost misses it, but she catches sight right before the current throws it against a rock. The shattered pieces float on top of the foaming surface for another moment before being sucked down for good.

"Willa!" Wynonna calls out behind her. A different Willa might have jumped, maybe even lost her footing and slipped to fall on her behind while her sister laughed. A different Willa might have shrieked and flailed, or turned and shot Wynonna a look and snapped at her to warn a girl next time. This Willa, who'd been blindfolded in the backyard at the age of three and tasked with tagging Daddy with a paintball gun before her knocked her over, caught the sound of Wynonna's footsteps halfway down the bank. "Daddy says we're not supposed to go near the creek in snowmelt season."

Willa turns and raises a slow eyebrow. "Since when do you care about listening to Daddy, firecracker? Last time he said no cookies for dinner, pretty sure you stuck a whole handful in your face as soon as he turned his back."

Wynonna's eyes go shifty. "Well," she says, and shoves her hands in her pockets. That's apparently all she's going to say about that, and Willa can't help but grin a little. "It's not that far. I bet I could cross it."

The drumroll in Willa's chest picks up again. She scans the creek, then points to a large tree, fallen so its trunk spans from one side to the other some ten yards down. Mama would tear a strip off Willa's hide so large you'd think they never bonded over Daddy's knuckles. Willa knows the smart answer, especially since she's meant to protect Wynonna. It's no good to keep her safe from revenants only to goad her into falling in the creek.

But three days ago Wynonna stumbled downstairs, yawning and scrubbing at her eyes, flopped into her chair at the breakfast table and dropped her forehead to rest on the woven placemat, grumbling about waking before the sun reached its high point in the sky. Meanwhile Willa had been up for hours, waking before the first golden rays of dawn to run and shoot and stretch, collapsing to devour a bowl of cold oatmeal before heading out for the second round of training. She'd said nothing to Wynonna, only reached over to ruffle her hair, and Wynonna had made a face and snapped at her, playing revenant. Willa had formed a gun with her fingers, pressed it between Wynonna's eyes and pulled the imaginary trigger, and Wynonna gasped and clutched at her chest, falling dramatically dead and nearly knocking over the pitcher of milk.

It's not Wynonna's fault, but the strange itch behind Willa's eyes drives the words out of her. "There's that log down there," she says. "I'll bet you three shots with Peacemaker that you can't make it over and back without a slip."

Wynonna's eyes light up like crazy wildfire, and she immediately bends to stuff the hems of her pants into her boots and check her soles for clumps of mud that might slip her up. "You better get ready to grab that gun," Wynonna declares. She pulls her hair back into a braid and tucks the tail into the collar of her shirt. "I can climb better than you, even."

Willa eyeballs the log as best she can from here and it doesn't look too bad, a bit slippery but handholds enough. Still, there's the right thing and the stupid thing, and Willa has lived long enough to know the difference.

She'll never know, later, if she did it on purpose or not, if the words were chosen for exactly the intended effect or if Willa just wasn't thinking. "Wait, Wynonna, it looks dangerous," Willa says. "I'll let you fire Peacemaker anyway, just come on back now."

She may as well have set fire to Wynonna's boots and pushed her across. "I'm not scared," Wynonna retorts. "Close your eyes if you can't watch, but you can't stop me!"

Wynonna dashes off down the bank, and she clambers up and over the roots of the fallen tree and pulls herself onto the trunk. Willa bites her lip, but the thing is Wynonna is an excellent climber and always has been, and the trunk is twice as thick as her waist. Wynonna is brave but not stupid, most of the time, and if Willa doesn't challenge her anymore then it should be fine.

Slowly Wynonna picks her way across, choosing her footing and balancing on her knees, planting her hands solid before she drags one knee up to join them. Willa breathes shallow for the first few feet but she's all right, she knows what she's doing. It's not windy, it's not raining, and there are no ravens sitting in the branches that might take a swoop at her.

And honestly, if Willa can face down seventy-seven undead horrors with nothing more than her Daddy's handgun, Wynonna can take a scamper along a fallen log just fine.

"Willa?"

This time the voice does startle her, because Willa's had her focus so tight on Wynonna that even the trilling of the birds and the crash of the water faded in the back of her mind. Willa bites down a shout and stares down at Waverly, dressed in overalls with her hair in pigtails because Mama had really gone overboard with the whole 'baby girl who'll never touch a gun so help her God' thing.

Waverly's eyes go big and wide. "What's Wynonna doing? She's not supposed to be up there!"

Willa rolls her eyes. "And what are _you_ going to do, Little Bit, tell Daddy? You gonna snitch on your big sister, get Wynonna in trouble?"

Waverly sticks out her chin, and she's four years old and spoiled rotten both with Mama's attention and Daddy's neglect and Willa can't stand to look at her, so soft and sweet and _pure_. Willa is blood and dust and gunpowder by comparison, the wrath of Wyatt Earp twisted into the shape of a pretty little girl. Waverly is everything that Willa will never — and can never, and can't tell if she wants to ever — be.

"It's not safe!" Waverly bursts out. "I'm supposed to tell Daddy when things aren't safe, he said!"

She turns and makes to run back up the trail. Quick as a rattlesnake Willa's hand lashes out and grabs Waverly by the arm, drags her back. Her fingers dig in hard and she adds a hard twist for good measure. She only stops when Waverly lets out a gasp of pain, tears pricking her big brown eyes, and Willa drops to one knee without letting go and gives her a shake.

The danger hum is in her chest again, but this time it's not the revenants and it's not the creek or the log or the wet rocks beneath. It's Daddy's backhand splitting her lip, it's Daddy's fingers pinching her ear hard enough to hurt, Daddy's voice in her ear hissing _reckless, what do you think you're doing acting stupid like that,_ Daddy saying _I'll teach you not to be careful._

Daddy's never touched Wynonna in anything but careless affection, and Willa will not be the reason that changes.

"You will not go get Daddy, you hear me?" Willa hisses. "You want to look like the big brave hero, you climb up there and get Wynonna back yourself. But if you try to leave and tattle, I'll break your arm and tell him you tripped on a root out in the woods, and you know — you _know_ — he'll believe me."

Waverly's breath comes quick and sharp. She stares up at Willa with the tears still shining on her cheeks, but then her eyes narrow and a layer of ice sharpens her expression like the first fall frost. "Fine," she says, ridiculous bravado in a girl not old enough for schooling, but she yanks her arm free anyhow and stalks away toward the bank.

Wynonna has made it past the halfway point and is still going strong. Waverly picks her way through the tangle of leaves and twigs to the mess of roots at the base of the tree as Willa watches, drumming her fingers against her forearm. She'll never do it, Waverly is half the girl Wynonna is if that, and she's never done worse than scrape her knee on the gravel driveway and even then Mama rushed out to kiss it better right away.

Except she does. Waverly pulls herself up onto the log, and her face has gone ghost-white but she doesn't back down. Willa clicks her tongue, impressed in spite of herself, and she's about to call out to Waverly to come back, it'll be fine, when Wynonna reaches the far bank and spins around in triumph.

"Hey Willa!" she calls out, waving her arms and grinning fit to split her face. Except a second later she catches sight of Waverly and the smile slides right off. "Wav, what are you doing?" Wynonna cries, sharp and scared.

Waverly jumps, startled by the shout after concentrating so hard on the log in front of her, and loses her hold.

The next five seconds happen in slow motion.

Waverly's hand slips off the branch. Her knees skid on the wet bark. Wynonna dashes forward but loses footing, falls down hard and barely catches herself from toppling over the edge. Waverly, terrified and flailing, is not so lucky. Wynonna screams her name, the sound high-pitched and ragged with terror, and Waverly manages half of Wynonna's own before a wordless shriek takes over.

The water swallows the rest of her cries, and the creek would take her and dash her against the rocks until her skull shatters, cold and heartless as a revenant, and Wynonna —

Wynonna will never forgive herself. And if she learns the truth, not Willa either.

But the thing is, the creek is just water and rocks and current, while Willa is the goddamn Earp Heir, as Daddy is so fond of shouting whenever she tries to make excuses. The shock of the water knocks the breath clean out from her chest, but Waverly's gone under and Willa doesn't have time to think about the cold. She braces herself against a boulder in Waverly's path, swallows a mouthful of near-freezing water and spreads out her arms as wide as she can.

Her sister hits her square in the chest, and Willa drags Waverly's head above the surface and holds her there, spluttering and gasping. "Wynonna, don't move!" Willa snaps, knowing without looking that Wynonna will be frozen with indecision but a heartbeat away from jumping in herself in her haste to help. "I've got her, you stay where you are until you can get down safe. I don't need to save you too!"

Waverly clings to Willa's neck, legs wrapped around her waist like a koala as Willa inches them back towards the shore and slowly drags them up and over the edge. Waverly's scared but she's breathing, and she's soaked through but Willa caught her before any of the rocks or branches did and that's as best they could ever hope for. With Waverly safe Wynonna gets a grip on herself long enough to scramble back without losing her balance, and she nearly stumbles three more times before crashing to her knees in front of Willa.

"Wave!" Wynonna blurts out, and just like Wynonna's voice made her lose her balance in the first place, the burst of concern startles her out of shocked silence into a full flood of tears. She flings herself away from Willa into Wynonna's arms, and Wynonna has never been a hugger and her idea of comfort is to throw a box of bandaids and run in the opposite direction before the crying starts, but now she clings to Waverly and pulls her tight. "I'm sorry," Wynonna says. "I'm so glad you're okay."

"Let's get inside before we all freeze to death," Willa says, forcing her tone light because sometimes that's the only way to go. She pulls Wynonna to her feet and tries to take Waverly, but Wave shies away and buries her face in Wyonna's neck instead. And she's half Wynonna's height and weight but you know what, fine, Willa's cold and breathless and terrified of what will happen when they get home, and so she lets Wynonna heft Waverly high enough that her feet don't drag on the ground and that's that.

They make it home safe enough, shivering and soaked but alive, and Mama takes one look at them and orders everyone inside to strip and warm up in front of the stove while she fetches them blankets and dry clothing. Mama puts Waverly to bed soon after with a hot water bottle and a pile of quilts fit to suffocate a moose, then comes back down to find Willa.

"What happened?" Mama asks, hands pressed together in front of her, face drawn and pale. "What was Waverly doing anywhere near the river?"

Lucky for Willa, she had the whole trudge home to think of what to say. "She was wandering," she says. "The rocks are slippery near the creek and she fell in, lucky I was close enough to catch her before anything happened. She'll be fine, we don't need to tell Daddy."

Mama purses her lips like Willa's words struck her unexpected in the face, but she nods. She understands, even as Wynonna frowns. "She's safe, and so are you, so I think you're right. Do you need anything, Willa? You don't want to catch cold."

"I'm fine," Willa says, and wraps a quilt around herself in demonstration. "I'm going to sit here with Wynonna for a while. You make sure Wave is okay."

Mama doesn't waste any more time checking whether Willa is sincere, and Willa swallows a sigh of relief and a bitter tang in her mouth all at once. She's not that cold, anyway, it's not like training out in the middle of the snow with Daddy is much better, and she winds her hair up and ties it in a knot at the back of her neck to keep it from sticking cold and damp to her skin and that's good enough.

Wynonna has her knees pulled up to her chest, and she presses her forehead against her thighs. "Thanks for not telling about the dare," Wynonna says, not raising her face. "And how I was too scared to help."

"It's not your fault," Willa soothes. She runs one hand over Wynonna's hair in long, slow strokes, and Wynonna makes a small noise and inches closer. Her shoulders shake and her breaths come out in hitches, and an ugly thought winds its way through Willa's mind. "You know Waverly wants to be just like you, but you didn't know she would follow you out on that log like that. I didn't see her either, I was too busy watching you. She might have fallen anyway even if you didn't scare her by shouting. Don't blame yourself."

A quiet sob tears itself loose from Wynonna's throat, and she hunches in tighter. "You're wrong, it is all my fault," she gasps out. "Waverly almost died because of me and I couldn't even save her."

"That's what I'm here for," Willa says gently. Guilt drags its claws across the back of her neck but she shakes it off, determined. "I'll always be here to save you and Waverly, Wynonna. That's my job."

Wynonna hiccups, and Willa tugs at the ends of her hair. "Because you're the Heir, or because you're our sister?" she asks, turning her head sideways and favouring Willa with a ghost of her usual cocky smile.

"Both," Willa says, and flicks her nose.

That night Waverly sleeps straight through dinner. Daddy doesn't notice, too preoccupied with work and some idiot coworker he wishes were a revenant just so he could end the bastard, and Mama doesn't make a single mention about the afternoon. Willa and Wynonna exchange glances, Wynonna's eyes tight around the corners.

"Pass the ketchup?" Willa asks, casual and breezy, and Mama passes over the bottle without a word.

* * *

And then, one day not long after that — no more Mama.

Willa and Wynonna come home from school to find Waverly on the porch, playing with her one-eyed dolls and humming absently in that tuneless way she has. "Have you seen Mama?" Waverly calls out, mouth turned down in a pout. She moves her dolls behind her at the sight of Willa, placing herself between them, and Willa rolls her eyes but doesn't challenge, not in front of Wynonna. "I had my nap and now I can't find her. I'm hungry, too. I woke up hours and hours ago, but when I asked Daddy he just left."

Shit. "Stay with Waverly," Willa tells Wynonna, who drops her backpack and sits next to Waverly on the steps. Willa leaves her school things on the front stoop and heads off away from the homestead, heading out through the fields and down the trail toward the old graveyard.

Willa veers right for the grave with the big, solid headstone that's wide enough to sit on, except that Mama's not there. She scours the ground for footprints, for the butts from Mama's cigarettes, but finds nothing. No treads, not even ashes, and the moss growing in the letters is still thick and dark, not scraped clean by Mama's fingernail.

The fear catches her then, and Willa turns tail and runs straight back to the homestead.

Willa finds Daddy in the barn, hitched up onto a beam with his back pressed against the wall and a bottle of whiskey in his hand. He's bleary and red-eyed, face blotchy and streaked with tears, and he looks down at Willa as dead and exhausted as he's ever been after a long fight.

It's the face of a broken man, but Willa has long learned that that doesn't mean he's innocent. "Did you do it?" Willa asks. She spits out the words like bullets, or maybe chips of ice, and Daddy winces and flinches back as though she'd put Peacemaker up to his temple and pulled the trigger.

His mouth turns down and his chin trembles. "Willa, you know I would never —"

"Save it." Willa is twelve years and twelve hundred years all at once, tired and furious and sad and exhausted, a hundred emotions battling it out inside her like a swarm of bees trapped in a jar. "What I _know_ is how you get. Don't play with me. Did you do it?"

Daddy closes his eyes, swears softly under his breath and thunks his head back against the wall. "Swear to God, Willa, I almost wish I did," he says. His voice rasps, wet with tears and raw from sobbing. He'd never made this much fuss over Mama while she was here, and Willa fights the urge to scale the rafters and clock him one right over the head. "At least then I'd know it was my fault. I'd know what happened."

"Revenants?" Willa asks, because that's next in line.

Daddy shakes his head. "Not as far as I could tell." He pushes a hand through his hair and looks at her again, and on his face Willa sees the same cocktail of ugly emotions that's tangled up in her own chest. "I'd kill 'em all over again to get her back, but no. This is — she just left, that's all."

"She wouldn't." It's a stupid, childish — no, downright babyish — thing to say, and Willa even hears herself, her voice all high and shaky like a little girl's, but she can't stop it. "She might leave you, but she wouldn't leave us."

She wanted to hurt him, for her words to stab him again and make him grimace, but Daddy only gives Willa a nasty, sliding sort of smile and salutes her with his bottle. "Yeah, well, guess what, baby girl." He takes a long, slow swig, tilting his head back as far as he can go, and when he's done he wipes his arm across his mouth. "Your mama's a bitch."

Willa hisses through her teeth, and a scream builds up in her throat before fizzling out at the last minute, leaving her defeated and dissatisfied like when a sneeze changes its mind. It's absolutely crazy but she almost wishes Daddy had done it too. That would give her something to hit, something to shout at, something to _hate._

At least, something that isn't Mama.

Willa's eyes sting but she blinks back the tears because Daddy's watching, and she might hate him some days with a fire as strong as the one that burns for the revenants but they're two halves of the same ugly soul. He'll be looking to see his words made their mark the same as Willa tried with him, and she won't give him the satisfaction. "You stay here until you've dried out," Willa says instead. She tries for a snarl but it comes out dead. "I'll tell the girls."

* * *

Waverly cries, soft and helpless the way that means she knows no one can hear her who will save her but can't stop. Willa twists her arm around behind her, jams a knee into the small of her back. "I've got you now, revenant scum," Willa whispers, and she makes a gun with her fingers and presses it to the base of Waverly's skull. "You tell me where the rest of your friends are and I'll make it quick. Lie to protect them and I'll drag you over the line and tie you to a tree and watch you burn."

Waverly shakes her head, cries turning to hard, furious sobs, and if Willa ever had to give her baby sister a compliment it's that she's never broken in all the times they've played Revenants. She's got her face in the dirt and Willa's entire weight on her back but she only grits her teeth and grits out, "We'll kill you one day, Earp," in her growly fake-Revenant voice.

Wynonna's voice cuts through the forest. "Willa?" she calls out. "Have you found the revenant yet? Your backup is getting bored!"

Willa laughs. "The cavalry saves the day," she says, and she stands up, grabs Waverly by the back of her collar and drags her to her feet. "Tell her and I'll make it so much worse you won't believe," she says to Waverly, calm and collected and quiet like Daddy at his scariest, and Waverly glares and wipes her eyes but keeps her mouth pressed tightly shut.

"I've got one!" Willa shouts back toward Wynonna. "Bringing her out now. Let's see if she'll tell us where the nest is."

* * *

"I don't want to play Revenants anymore," Waverly says the next time Willa brings it up. She sets her jaw and plants her hands on her hips, all tough even though she's five years old and soft as a marshmallow. "You always make me be the revenant, and it's not fair. I want to be the Heir for once!"

Wynonna's out on the lawn trying to learn herself cartwheels, which means she's running full tilt and flinging herself at the ground and, more often than not, landing flat on her back. Willa gives Waverly a long, thoughtful look. "You want to be the Heir?" she says.

"Why not?" Waverly shoots back. "It's just a game."

Willa unfolds herself from her perch on the porch railing, and Waverly flinches back but doesn't flee. "You want to be the Heir," she says again, and this time Waverly doesn't answer, just stares up at Willa with her throat working. "You know you can only be the Heir if me and Wynonna are both dead. Is that what you want? Both your sisters to die so that you can be the hero and impress Daddy?" She shakes her head, theatrical. "Wow, Wave, and here I thought the revenants were heartless."

Waverly opens her mouth, shuts it, opens it again, her cheeks flushed red. "That's not what I meant," she protests, panicked and shrill. "I only, I just thought —"

"You just wanted to be the Heir so bad you didn't care about what that meant for me and Wynonna," Willa says in mock-consoling tones. "I understand. How do you think Wynonna would feel if she knew you had happy little daydreams where she _dies_?"

"Don't," Waverly begs, holding out her hands. "Willa, please don't, don't tell her, I'll do anything. You can use Bear-Bear for target practice again, just please don't tell."

Willa gives her a sharp smile, then turns and cups her hands around her mouth. "Hey Wynonna!" she calls out, and Waverly hisses and presses herself back against the deck chair. "Let's try a new version of Revenants. Revenant Waverly kills you and I have to avenge you, how's that?"

Wynonna leaps up and claps. "That sounds awesome!" she cries. "Can I do a really dramatic death scene? Can I get tortured first? Can I die after blowing up a whole nest of revenants and take them all out with me?"

"Don't ask me, ask Waverly," Willa says with a wink. "It was her idea."

* * *

Daddy makes his deal, but the revenants come anyway. They break through the window and drag Willa away, and it turns out an entire lifetime of fighting and training and target practice and taking Daddy's blows aren't worth shit when there's one revenant on each arm and another pinning her legs. She screams and screams but it doesn't matter, and one strikes her hard across the face and she spits blood back at him but it doesn't stop them.

The last thing Willa sees before a fist to the skull knocks her unconscious is Wynonna shooting Daddy straight between the shoulder blades.

* * *

"You can't keep me here forever."

Willa talks braver than she feels, but it's not her fault. It's hard to be brave in a nightgown with no weapons, in a tiny room filled with soft, mismatched furniture and flower-patterned blankets. It's like a parody of a little girl's room by someone who's never had one, and she wraps her arms around her chest and glares at the man in the doorway.

"They're looking for me already," she says, lifting her chin. Daddy might be dead, but there's still Sheriff Nedley, and Shorty, and Gus, and a whole town filled with people who think hunting and shooting are a fine way to spend the weekend. This isn't some soft city-suburb, this is Purgatory, and the Earps aren't the only ones who deal in justice. "Someone will save me."

The man steps forward with one hand raised, and Willa jerks back away from the blow except that's not what happens. Instead he strokes her cheek, soft and soothing, and no one has ever touched her that way before, all that tenderness and not even a drop of fear. Even Mama was afraid of her, some days, when she looked into Willa's eyes and saw Daddy staring back. Willa's breath catches in her chest.

"You're right," the man says, brushing his thumb along her jaw. "Someone will save you, I promise."

Not a lick of this makes sense, and the insanity of it and the sheer presumption of his words and the touch of his hand on her face breaks whatever spell he'd used to hold her there. Willa wrenches her head out of his reach and backs up until she crashes into the trunk behind her. "Don't touch me," she snarls, cheeks flaming. "Touch me again and I'll break your fingers off."

An expression like hurt flashes across his face, and he raises both hands. "I promise, Willa. I won't touch you, not until you ask me to."

* * *

Bobo Del Ray makes Willa two promises that first day in the treehouse, though she spits in his face and doesn't see them for what they are. But it's not until one evening, some ten years later, when the sun sets behind the trees and the light slanting in through the window shines orange-gold against the wood — when Willa sits on the bench with Bobo's head in her lap, tracing her fingers through the soft hair swept back from his forehead as he twists a scrap of paper into the shape of a swan — that she realizes he kept both of them.

And so, when Bobo asks — and he always asks, never demands, not with her — Willa makes a promise in return.

* * *

The Stone Witch touches Willa's forehead. Her fingers press cold as marble, as ice, and the power rushes through her. For a moment it's exhilarating, raw and uncontained, but then Willa's memories start to slip and wriggle away from her like the silver flash of a river trout before it disappears under the surface.

Willa screams, but then —

* * *

Life with Yiska is good. Yiska is good. Eve is not, but she tries. Oh she tries, submitting to ritual cleanse after cleanse, apologizing to Yiska with her knees pressed to the floor and her forehead against his boot, for each impure thought, each inappropriate longing, each surge of emotion that a good sister should ignore.

Because she can't. There are days, when Yiska throws a sister to the floor, when he smears black marks upon her skin, when he drags her out through the front door and throws her into the woods and slams the house closed behind her, when Eve is anything but calm and good and yielding. When she reaches deep inside herself for the peace that Yiska promises should pass all understanding but all she feels is —

Fire. Fire and rage, deep and rushing like the river, a rage that balls her hands into fists and sends her heart to pounding. One day while watching a punishment Eve takes a full step forward, filled with the irrepressible urge to — to what? She only knows that she has to act, she has to _do something_ — but Yiska sees her, and he calls her over and asks if she would like to join her sister in the snow.

Eve stares at Yiska straight in the eye, and a faint whisper of thought slips around the edges of her mind. Cold metal in her palm, one finger cocked around a trigger, and in her mind (her memory?) this girl-who-was is calm, calmer than Eve has ever been. She pulls the trigger and —

"Well?" Yiska asks.

The wolf-girl in Eve's mind snarls and roars and bares her teeth, and another Eve, an Eve-who-was, Eve-who-never-shall-be reaches up and snaps his fingers, wrenches his hand to break his wrist for good measure, yanks his arm behind his back and drives her knee into his solar plexus and runs while he's left gasping on the floor.

The bubble pops. There's no wolf-girl, no snarling, only Eve, who is weak and sinful and cannot do as she's told.

"No, Yiska," Eve bursts out. She lowers herself to her knees, bends her head. She's trembling. "I wish to stay with you."

"Of course you do," he says, indulgent, and lays a hand on her head in benediction.

* * *

They tell Eve that she's an Earp. That her name is not Eve at all, but Willa. That she was a sister and a daughter and beloved, and not just a sad, undeserving, filthy wretch abandoned by Yiska for failing to reach the standard of purity she'd fought to achieve since — since —

She tries to remember, she does, tries to be the girl that Wynonna thinks she is, the one she needs, the big sister who will save them all and take this pressure from her shoulders. But the more days pass, the more Willa thinks she's not that girl, and worse, that she never was.

But she might, Willa thinks, be the girl that Waverly thinks she is, cold and calculating and able to survive when hell itself tries to drag her down. Waverly looks at her sidelong with a wariness and fear that borders on the edge of absolute hatred, but somehow that's easier to bear than Wynonna's raw, aching longing. It's exhausting, looking into those eyes and seeing a girl she'll never be, not knowing if that girl ever existed, if Willa even wants her to. It's much easier to be one girl's monster than another girl's saviour, and so Willa doesn't try to stop it.

Peacemaker answers to her hand and that makes it easier, and so she fights, and she kills, and with each portal to hell that opens in a roaring flame beneath a revenant's feet, Willa finds another piece of herself. Willa laughs and drinks liquor that burns her throat and revels in her freedom, and she speaks to Waverly in a cold, detached voice that makes her sister's nostrils flare even as she draws Wynonna close and strokes her hair.

The more memories come back, the more Willa is convinced Waverly is the one who's got it right. Then Waverly brings her to the treehouse and Willa remembers.

She's not the girl Wynonna remembers, or even the one who haunts Waverly's nightmares, oh no. She's much, much more, and she has a job to do.

* * *

The monster has her. Its tentacles slide across her skin, squeezing the air from her lungs and the life from her body. This isn't what she wanted, and it's not what it promised her for all those years. She can't even be angry, even as the pain rips scream after scream from her. Another promise, another lie. Isn't this exactly what she always knew?

 _Death can be a mercy,_ said the creature in the dark, said Willa herself, not one minute ago, and Wynonna had stared at her with a thousand aches in her soul and failed to understand. Willa didn't expect her to, not really. The Wynonna who existed in Willa's memory would have, maybe, the little girl who ran across the river and played dead and begged Willa to let her fire Peacemaker just once. That Wynonna might not have understood but she would have listened, maybe, because she loved her sister and trusted her more than anything, and much more than was sane.

The Wynonna that Willa remembers would have stepped across the line and joined Willa on the other side without question. The Willa in Wynonna's memory would not have asked her to. It's an irony that cuts deep even as the monster draws in tight and threatens to tear her right in two.

Now Wynonna faces down the monster, and Willa called her weak but she was wrong, so wrong. Tears glisten in Wynonna's eyes but her aim is steady, and Peacemaker's barrel glows blue and doesn't waver as she holds the gun at arm's length clenches her teeth.

"Make your peace," Wynonna says, her voice little more than a whisper. Willa doesn't hear the words so much as she feels them, and their gazes lock and Willa gasps and finds herself frozen for one long moment.

 _Peace_. Willa couldn't tell you what that means, not in this lifetime or any of the others that were taken from her, muddled and swirling in her mind in a mad confusion of ragged identities, but maybe, just maybe Wynonna knows.

Wynonna fires. The bullet punches Willa in the gut, knocks her back as pain races through her worse than anything else she's ever felt, but then it changes.

A strangeness comes over her that makes everything — the monster, the graveyard, Wynonna's anguished face, lifetime after lifetime of reaching and straining and never finding — fade like ancient photographs. _Peace_ , Willa thinks. Is that what this is? It's like water, cool against her burning skin, like the shadow of a cloud across the sun on a scorching day, like a soft pillow and freshly-washed sheets after hours and hours of work and aching muscles.

Willa lets her eyes fall shut and sinks down into that cool, soft darkness. The last of the physical sensations around her, grounding her to this world of lies and disappointment and pain, they all fall away and then, at last —


End file.
